


Succession

by Leidolette



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-10
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-08 03:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/pseuds/Leidolette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A princess learns her place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Succession

Your name is Feferi Peixes and you are a princess.

But there have been many other princesses before you. 

You have always known it. No one told you about the others, but it was not hard to figure out. There are clothes in the closets of the dusty, unused rooms of your labyrinthine castle that model the style of twenty sweeps ago. You sift through piles of acid wash jeans and fluorescent spandex. Behind a dresser you find a faded poster of troll Madonna; there's handwriting on one corner that is too washed-out to read. 

Sweeps ago, when you were messing around with the seaweed garden in the rear of your hive, you found buried treasure. You recognized the chest - you have about thirty that look exactly the same back at your hive; they are standard decoration in your castle. 

The chest was filled with brightly colored sea trash mixed with priceless gems that were otherworldly in both the figurative and the literal sense. There were fossilized teeth as big as your palm from the mawbeasts that circle the deep. There was a troll jaw bone decorated with silly doodles and a sealed jar of some sludgy grey slime. At the bottom of the chest was a sheet of paper with the words 'Timecarpsule! Do net open!' written in a childish hand. Below the the charming fish puns was a scribbled little smiley face with a pair of very familiar horns. 

But the treasure was not yours, and it was older than 20 sweeps. 

\----

There is a painting. Her Imperial Condescension is stretched out on a chaise lounge, commanding the viewer's gaze and attention as always; but she is not alone. One of her arms lazily hangs over the edge and rests on the shoulder of a princess who is posed comfortably on a troll-skin rug. The volcanic vent depicted in the background throws a reddish glow over the scene, highlighting the princess' wavy hair and soft hands. 

Your eyes are drawn back to the Condesce. The same light highlights her fangs.

You walk a few steps to the right. On the wall hangs another painting, nearly identical to the first. The only thing that is different is the face of the princess.

You breath out. They are a beautiful set of paintings, really. You think Eridan would appreciate the classical style.

\----

There is a video (there are probably many videos but you haven't the heart to search out more) of her Imperial Condescension and a tyrian princess. 

They are in space, so this must be after the princess' coming-of-age, but she looks like she barely qualifies as an adult. The princess is a strange combination of baby fat and gangliness, moving too fast and too clumsily. The Condesce looks the same as she always has. 

The recording has no sound, and along the bottom of the screen a timestamp counts every second. There's more information too, stuff that must be the terminal number and the ship designation and who knows what else. You were never good at computers. It's obviously an old security feed though, not something fit for empire-wide broadcast.

There must be a conflict of some kind occurring outside of the ship because all of the officers are sitting at their battle stations with their backs ramrod straight. Her Imperial Condescension is barely paying attention, she's slouched on the opulent throne in the center of the room absently flicking one of her many bracelets. Every now and then her mouth will move and the Tactical Officer standing at attention beside her will burst into action, pointing at a terminal and relaying stern, rapid fire commands.

Then the Condesce yawns and waves her hand, stopping the officer mid-word. She says something and nods to the princess who is seated a step down on her right. The princess startles and glances at the Condesce with a wide, vulnerable face before she tenses and springs into action.

You can see that the girl is too aggressive, too eager to prove herself right off the bat. She practically jumps to her feet and begins to pace in front of the line of command terminals, staring at the viewport that is somewhere offscreen to the left. She starts snarling at the techs and making wide, decisive movements with her hands. The heiress trips a little when she swirls around to examine the readouts on a wallscreen but she tries to cover up the mistake with a sharp motion towards the tactical officer.

During this upset in the usual power structure the bridge crew's body language becomes even tenser. You can see a navigation sensor operator suppressing a wince at the heiress' every shouted word and the communications officer has sweat beading at her temples. Her Imperial Condescension, however, slouches back into her throne. She laughs behind her trident when the princess makes a particularly emphatic motion that is obviously meant to inspire the crew. After the princess's next order, the Condesce looks directly at the camera and rolls her eyes. She mimes the act of talking with her left hand while the princess shouts out orders to the Tactical Officer. The harried T.O. stalks over to a husk terminal to pass the verbal dressing-down on to a lower ranking officer and the princess looks over at the Condence with uncertainty in her eyes. The Condence quickly changes the mocking hand gesture into thumbs-up. 

Even the pretend support doesn't last long, though. The princess turns back to the out-of-sight viewscreen and blanches at what she sees. Terminals all around the command center start flashing furiously, and a bright red light turns on, next to the regular overhead one, and gives the scene the barest scarlet tint. Her Imperial Condescension frowns. This time when the princess looks back for support the Condesce just sneers and points to the lowered seat off to her right. The princess looks nauseated as she is relieved from duty and slowly sets herself back down.

The Condesce looks cranky as she appears to rattle off a couple new orders to the sweaty Tactical Officer. She lazily makes a few motions at some nearby technicians, and within a few minutes the warnings on the terminal screen fade to green and the red overhead light turns off. Every crew member on the bridge looks relieved... except for the princess.

There is a pause for a moment as the Condensce rolls her shoulders and cracks her neck. Then she motions the princess over to stand in front of the elevated throne. Even on her feet the princess is towered over by the sitting Empress. The Condesce is talking now, saying who-knows-what as she twirls the golden trident in her left hand. The princess' face betrays everything: desperation, surprise, fear, dread.

The trident moves impossibly quickly and then the princess is on the floor, the center prong sticking right through her neck. The only thing on her face now is blood.

You calmly close the lid of your husktop.

\----

It gets to you sometimes, though. When that happens, you go where it is hard for any troll but you to survive. 

The water weighs heavy on you as you descend, as comforting as a thick blanket. First you lose color, then you lose all light as you swim ever downward. It makes little difference this far down. Your lateral lines tingle at the distant wriggling of a school of fin creatures and your hair billows out behind you, sensing the minute changes in current. The gargantuan snail carcass that you drag behind you slows your progress, but your lusus must be fed.

And still you descend. 

It is impossible to miss Gl'bgolyb. She is a glacier of flesh on the ocean floor. Vast and lovely. When they are small, every wriggler thinks that their lusus is big and strong enough to protect them from anything. For you though, this is actually true.

With one exception. 

No matter how much your mom loves you, she will not protect you from her other child. Her eldest.

You know your future. When you turn ten the Imperial Fleet flagship will splash down on the surface and sink until it reaches the coral lawnring of your hive. The sealed hatch will open and out will come a flood of courtiers and flagbearers. This is the part you are most familiar with; this is the part that gets broadcast onto every viewgrub and husktop on the planet and then is carefully archived for posterity. You've gone through them; the oldest records are grainy things with patchy sound to match, but you could still recognize her. Her Imperial Condescencion wore a cape assembled from the pelts of a hundred dambeast kits and glittering jewels on every one of her fingers. Her hair billowed out behind her, the same as ever. She smiled a smile with too many teeth (just like yours) and welcomed the heiress onto the ship with trumpeting fanfare and a firm hand on her shoulder. The ceremony repeated over and over again in every video you had watched, the only signs of the advancing years had been the changing faces of the entourage and the increasing picture quality. 

You drop the dead snail. The body floats at neutral buoyancy for a few seconds before a massive white tentacle reaches up and drags it the rest of the way down. You've done your duty, but you don't really feel any better -- this must really be an off-day.

"I glub you, Mom," you say in the direction of what might be her head. She hums to you happily, her hunger is sated for now. You _do_ love her, but you wish that she didn't have to eat other troll's parents, that she knew something other than the amoral nature of strange aeons, that she would protect you from your sister. Most of all, you wish that she were the size of a cuttlefish. She could live in a cage in your room and you could feed her little chunks of bhaleenbeast while she tickled your fingers.

But you know that none of these things will happen.

You are a princess. Your guardian is an unimaginable god that could end your race with a song. You are heiress to the most powerful empire in the galaxy; merciless and ever expanding. You will grow to be ageless, your touch will be immortality. 

And you are marked for death.


End file.
